Three Years and Counting
by RJ-Lennox
Summary: After a mysterious boy from the future arrives to warn the Z fighters about impending doom at the hands of evil Androids, everyone sets off for the next three years to train. When Vegeta stays at Capsule Corp to utilize their technology for his training, and unconventional and unpredictable relationship forms between him and Bulma.
1. Chapter 1

_Flip… Flip… Flip…_

_Clothes she's already seen… articles she's already read… gossip she's already heard…_

_Flip… flip…_

_They broke up like a year ago… had another baby… starring in another movie…_

_Flip…_

"Ugh!" Bulma finally called out in frustration, throwing her magazine out of her lap and crossing her arms. "Everyone else is working so hard getting ready for those Andriods while I'm sitting around the house doing nothing!" she sighed, placing her hand on her chin. "I wish there was something I could do…" she trailed off.

For a good week or so, Yamcha and Vegeta had been training, and hard. And when they weren't training, they were eating. Or at least, Yamcha was. Vegeta didn't seem to eat, or at least didn't seem to want to eat. All he wanted to do was train; that, and pester her father about new training equipment. And all that time, Bulma had nothing to do, no contributions to make. All she had were old fashion magazines that she had read about a billion times, and that was just no fun anymore.

"Bulmaaaa!" sang a cheerful voice. Bulma was temporarily pulled from her self-pity as she looked up, seeing her mother coming into the living room. "I stopped by the bakery today, and look what I bought for us! Nice, huh? Don't these look scrumptious?" Mrs. Briefs giggled, and was positively pleased with herself and her tray of goodies, ranging from cakes and tarts to candies and other sweets; all of them Bulma's favorite.

"Now, which one do you want?" Mrs. Briefs asked, excitedly.

Bulma just stared down at the tray; on any other day, she would have been digging in. But not today. Today, she felt too useless and unnecessary, and not even her favorite sweets could change that feeling.

"They're all yours mom, I'm not very hungry."

"What? But Bulma what's wrong with you?" Mrs. Briefs asked worriedly. "Are you feeling lonely because all the boys are spending all their time training and not spending time with you? That's it, isn't it?" Mrs. Briefs said, knowingly.

Bulma groaned, irritated. Her feelings had nothing to do with being ignored; they had to do with her being bored and useless!

"Oh, puh-lease!" she said throwing her hands in the air "I'm just not very hungry!"

She would have gone on a long rant about how not everything has to be about the boys and what there are or are not doing with her, but her thoughts were, once again, interrupted, this time by her father.

Dr. Briefs walked in, raising his arms above his head as he stretched and let out a long sigh, totally oblivious to what his wife and daughter had been talking about.

"Ugh, you know, I'm starting to think Vegea is a few cards short of a full deck!" he started. This perked Bulma up.

"Huh?" she wondered.

"It wasn't enough to have the simulator create three hundred times gravity for him!" Dr. Briefs explained. "Now he's demanding that I make some more equipment for him to train with, and all he's going to do is break it!" he whined. This didn't shock Bulma; persistence and dedication ran hand in hand with sheer stupidity when it came to Vegeta, just as much as breaking other people's stuff.

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me at all," Bulma agreed. After all, who did he think he was? Some kind of indestructible Superman? He was going to get himself killed.

"Well, I think it's great that he works so hard!" Mrs. Briefs chimed in. Bulma raised an eyebrow.

Dr. Briefs rolled his eyes. "Oh sure, he's training hard, but don't you think he's over doing it?"

Mrs. Briefs tittered. "Oh no, I think he's very admirable. In my day, a man that showed that much dedication to anything was definitely husband material. A girl would have to be crazy to let a man like him get away, I tell you." She took a sip of tea, and then gasped. "Oh, what am I saying, I'm a married woman!"

Bulma and Dr. Briefs looked at her in disbelief.

"Whatever you say, mom," Bulma said, shrugging off her mother's comments.

Sure, Vegeta was dedicated and head strong; that was something Bulma could admire, even in someone like Vegeta. But for Bulma, there was a fine line between being dedicated and being stupid. Three hundred times gravity?! That was just plain insanity and she couldn't understand why he'd do that to himself.

She crinkled her nose a bit. Actually, she could understand. It was the same reason she pushed herself so hard in school and hell, everything else. She, like Vegeta, wanted to be the very best, no matter the cost. Only for her, the cost was long, sleepless nights and toiling all day in labs; for Vegeta, it seemed he was willing to risk his very life, all for the glory of strength and power.

"You're just going to get yourself hurt, Vegeta," she muttered to herself, actually a bit worried about the Saiyan.

"What was that, Bulma dear?" her father asked.

"Oh, nothing dad," she replied quickly. "Just talking to myself." _Can't have them thinking I actually care about that idiot... _


	2. Chapter 2

Bulma, Dr. Briefs and Mrs. Briefs continued their luncheon in relative peace. Dr. and Mrs. Briefs talked more about what kind of work Dr. Briefs was doing on Vegeta's equipment (a conversation which really involved Mrs. Briefs asking a lot of questions over and over again and Dr. Briefs indulging her with the same answers over and over again) while Bulma simply sat in the chair, absently listening and nibbling on one of her favorite cakes.

She was still caught up on the beginning of their conversation and all the insane training that Vegeta was doing. She was shocked—and impressed—with how he was holding up. But she was still worried, even if she wouldn't admit that out loud to anyone.

_He's just going to blow himself up one day.._ she thought worriedly.

Not as soon as the thought crossed her mind, an incredible, deafening explosion came from outside, and it was close.

All three of them cried out in surprise as the ground rumbled and shook, and even the sturdy frame of the house began to quiver dangerously. The tray of sweets went flying in one direction, the tea in another, and somehow in all the shaking, Bulma's face ended up in the cake that she was eating.

"What the hell!" she shouted perplexed and a bit frightened.

"My word, what in the world is going on?!" Dr. Briefs added.

"Oh dear, it's the Androids! They've come, they've come!" Bulma's mother started to cry

Bulma rolled her eyes. "Mom, the Androids aren't coming for another three years. Look, it's stopping now, ok?" Bulma was right; the ridiculous shaking was beginning to lessen now.

Mrs. Briefs looked around, trying to confirm what her daughter was telling her. The she giggled.

"My dear, I guess I got a little carried away, ha."

Bulma groaned. _No shit, mom…_ Then she spoke. "Well it's too early for it to have been the Androids, so what in the world was—"

"Guyssss!" came a loud voice from the down the hall, accompanied by frantically pounding footsteps. It was Yamcha. He ran into the living room.

"Guys, uh, you gotta come quickly, Vegeta's capsule blew up, and he was in it!"

"What!?" Bulma, Dr. and Mrs. Briefs all yelled simultaneously. Bulma was the first to bolt out of her seat and run straight to door, pushing past Yamcha and heading to the back of the house and out the back door, towards where the capsule Vegeta was training in was at.

She could smell burnt metal and feel the lingering heat from the blast, and could see dark, angry black smoke coiling up from where Vegeta's capsule should have been.

_Oh Vegeta, what did you get yourself into? _

Bulma continued to run full speed, and cursed the fact that the layout of the home and property was so sprawled out. _I'm never going to get there!_ She thought frantically.

Yamcha caught up with her just as she neared Vegeta's capsule, but she was so absorbed in the sight of the wreckage that she didn't even acknowledge his presence.

"Vegeta!" she shouted, horrified; the capsule was completely demolished! A large, jagged hole was basically what was left of it, with the contents of the capsule charred and broken in a pile of rubble that spilled out of it onto the ground; bits and pieces of debris littered the yard, and there was only one thing missing from the scene: Vegeta himself.

Bulma knelt down into the wreakage, panicked. She couldn't see him anywhere!

From behind her, Yamcha said something, but she didn't pay his comments any mind; they weren't important right now.

"Where is he? Vegeta?" she worried to herself.

Bulma then began digging frantically through the rubble; Vegeta may have blown himself up, but he couldn't possibly have obliterated himself completely… could he?

Suddenly, so fast that she barely saw, a hand shot out of the pile Bulma was digging through. It startled her, so much in fact that she went tumbling backward, falling over Yamcha and knocking him down.

The hand clenched and unclenched once, and was slowly followed by an arm, a shoulder, and then finally the body they were attached to.

Vegeta pulled himself up, but Bulma could tell he was doing it weakly. Then she gasped at the sight of him; he was covered in bruises and there were several places on his body where skin had been completely burned or ripped open due what Bulma could only assume would be shrapnel from the explosion.

"You… ok?" she asked. She felt like it was a stupid question, but if he was able to pull himself up and able to answer, that couldn't be all bad, right? The way he looked just made it _seem_ like he was badly hurt…

She was still trying to convince herself.

"Of.. course.. I am," he managed to groan out. Bulma let out deep, relieved breath. Then she started in.

"How _dare_ you, you dweeb, you almost wreaked my house! What are you trying to prove!?"

Before Vegeta could make what Bulma expected would be a rude, snarky comment, he straightened himself up, laughed weakly, stumbled a little and then promptly fell back into the pile of rubble he just came out of moments ago.

Bulma was shocked. Didn't he say he was ok?!

"Oh no! You're hurt," she said, immediately rushing to his side. She propped him up with one of her arms, not an easy task considering that Vegeta was pretty much made of muscle. She watched as he slowly pried an eye back open, gauging whether or not he was going to pass out again.

"Go, I don't need help; I've got training to do," he rasped out.

She sighed. "You've got to stop training for a while! I mean look at you, you're a complete wreck!"

Vegeta squinted up at her through one eye, determined. "But I feel fine! I'm a Saiyan, I can take a little pain; it means nothing to me. And I _have_ to get stronger than Kakorot!"

Bulma softened. "Ok sure, we all know you're a tough guy but you need to rest now." She hoped that he would listen and take her advice; Bulma would not be so lucky today.

"I take orders from _no one_!" he barked, pushing away from her. He had almost gotten to the point where he could stand up, but instead toppled over again, this time face first into a pile of broken metal.

"Oh no!" Bulma cried out, checking him over to make sure he was ok. This time, he had _really_ passed out, and by the looks of it wasn't going to wake up anytime soon.

"Come on Bulma, let's get him inside. Your dad said to bring him inside if he was badly injured; Dr. Briefs had some stuff set up in case something like this happened."

At first Bulma didn't reply; she just continued to look down at Vegeta's expressionless, blank face.

She had been irritated with him earlier, irritated that he didn't seem to care about his own safety, and for what, more _power_? But looking at him now, beaten, battered, with his words about getting stronger than Goku ringing in her ears and the desperation and determination she heard even in his weak voice, the only thing Bulma felt for Vegeta right now was pity.

"B—Bulma?" Yamcha said, hesitating. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Come on, your dad will fix him right up, but we need to get him inside."

"What?" She looked up. "Oh. Right."

She took one of Vegeta's arms and draped it across her shoulder. She then attempted to step up, but the entirety of Vegeta's dead weight without him supporting himself was too much and she toppled over with Vegeta in tow.

"Here, let me help," Yamcha offered.

"No, I can do it!" she insisted. She tried again, this time using all the strength she could muster, and managed to pull him up with her.

Not as soon as she took the first step did she stumble over again, but this time Yamcha stepped in a caught both her and Vegeta.

Bulma sighed, exasperated.

"How about I get one side, and you get the other, yeah?" Yamcha suggested. Bulma had wanted to help Vegeta on her own—for her own, suborn reasons, and so she could feel useful—but decided that it would probably be better if Yamcha helped out. So she just nodded, and Yamcha slung Vegeta's other arm over his shoulder, and Bulma kept the one she had slung over hers securely in place, and they made their quickly—but gently—into the house. And Bulma had to admit, it was _a lot_ easier with Yamcha's help than it had been on her own.

Yamcha directed Bulma on where Dr. Briefs had told him to bring Vegeta if he was injured. It was in the guest area of the house, close to where Vegeta's room (if he ever decided he was going to use it, that is) was.

Dr. Briefs and Mrs. Briefs were already in there, waiting for them.

"Ah, I see it was a good decision to put this room in here after Vegeta asked for such extreme training equipment; I knew these would come in handy," he said, as he ushered Yamcha and Bulma in.

The room was complete with a hospital bed, heart, blood pressure, and lung monitors, machines that could scan a body and show where there was internal damage, the works. It looked like Dr. Briefs had already gotten some things set up, and as soon as Bulma and Yamcha set Vegeta onto the hospital bed ("Careful Yamcha, you big lug!" Bulma had shrieked) Dr. Briefs immediately began hooking Vegeta up to wires and nodes and turned on various equipment that made a multitude of beeping and buzzing noises. He then put a clear mask over Vegeta's mouth and nose, and explained that it would help Vegeta breathe if it turned out that there was any damage to his lungs.

Bulma looked on all of this with a careful, worried eye. Every wire, every node, every machine turned on made her realize more and more what she wished Vegeta would realize: he was not an indestructible man. No amount of Saiyan blood would change that, no amount royal heritage would fix it, either.

The proud prince should have learned that on Namek.

At some point after Dr. Briefs was done working on hooking Vegeta to just about every piece of machinery he could find, Yamcha asked Bulma if she wanted to go get some food.

"No," she said, kneeling beside Vegeta's bed. "I think I'll just stay here."

"You sure Bulma? You haven't eaten much today and I thought—"

"Yamcha, I said I was going to stay here, what part of that don't you understand?!" Bulma burst. She didn't want to be mean with Yamcha, but he had a bad habit of trying to get her to do things she didn't feel like doing, or trying to insert himself into situations he didn't need to, and right now Bulma wanted to stay here, with Vegeta, and make sure he healed right.

Yamcha scowled behind her, turned, and stalked out of the room.

"Is he going to be alright, daddy?" Bulma asked, not caring that Yamcha left.

"I hope so; the only thing he hasn't bruised is his eyebrows. If he stays in bed for a week or so he should be alright. He's dodged a bullet again, it's a miracle he survive such a horrible accident. Those Saiyans are practically indestructible!" he said, impressed.

"Oh, poor Vegeta!" Mrs. Briefs cried out.

Dr. Briefs put a comforting arm around his wife. "Come on dear, let's let him rest," he said, and he and Mrs. Briefs left Vegeta and Bulma alone.

Bulma looked down at the Saiyan prince, a frown on her face.

_You lump head… _

She began to turn around and head out with her parents, but Vegeta began to speak. Only, he was still asleep, and he wasn't talking to _her_.

"Kakorot!" he rasped out in his sleep. "I'll get stronger Kakorot! I'll beat you!."

Bulma looked down in disbelief and confusion. Vegeta's expression was anger, but his voice and the inflections in his tone were desperation and fear. He started to writhe, and even his angry expression turned to one of pain and anguish.

_He's having a nightmare_, she realized. She took the chair that was nestled between Vegeta's bed and a desk that was beside it, placed it in front of the desk, and sat in it. She then contemplated holding his hand through his nightmare, thought against it, and then went with it as she slowly leaned down from the chair and grasped his hand in hers.

It was a little weird. She had never held a hand quite like Vegeta's. It wasn't in the size—Yamcha for sure had some of the biggest hands she'd ever seen—but it was more in the way they felt. They were hard, and calloused on the palms, and his veins and tendons popped up on the surface, even as he slept.

Suddenly, the hand she was holding clenched, and Vegeta let out a pained sound.

"Ka-kor-ot!"

He started shaking, and she was afraid for a moment that he'd wake up. After all, who _knows_ what kind of mood he'd be in if he woke up and she was holding his hand, of all things.

Hoping it would calm him down, she rubbed the top of his hand with her thumb. It was something her father did when she was younger and scared, and it had always calmed her down.

She began tracing little circles over the surface of Vegeta's hand, and after a while the grip on her hand loosened. He still shook and muttered out as he slept, but he at least appeared to be less gripped with whatever it was in his dream that terrified him.

Bulma yawned.

_I suppose I'll get some rest too_… she thought as she drifted off, her hand absently tracing Vegeta's.


	3. Chapter 3

Vegeta shot up from where he was laying, the memory of his dream fresh on his mind.

Kakarrot… The purple haired boy from the future… They were Super Saiyans of all things, while he, the Prince of Saiyans, was struggling to hold his own against some training equipment. It was so pathetic, so embarrassing, that he, the Prince of Saiyans, should be reduced to such shame and humiliation.

He leaned back on the pillows, remembering what the dream version of his father had said. One day, he would become a Super Saiyan, too, and he would make Kakarrot rue the day he ever became a Super Saiyan and dare make a mockery of the great Saiyan Prince…

Vegeta sighed, shook his head, and took a look around the room he was in. The first thing that he noticed was that the Earth Woman—Bulma, the others called her—was slouched in a chair beside his. Her head rested on the desk she sat at, with one arm dangling down.

"What is _she_ doing here?" he wondered out loud. Then he grumbled, and turned away from Bulma. "It is no matter. The irritating Earth Woman and her needless concerns have interrupted my training for the last time."

He sat up fully, causing the nodes attached to his head to pop off with a snap. He then quickly ripped away any other wires that had been attached to his body, sending his monitors haywire as they read that his body had no signals.

"Pathetic Earth technology…" he muttered to himself.

Vegeta threw his legs over the side of the bed, and set his feet onto the cool floor. _They even took off my shoes… _he thought, fairly annoyed. _But no matter._

He then took the time to flex his muscles, feeling out his increase in strength. The bandages wrapped around his forearms tensed with each flex, but Vegeta could there was already strength returning to and increasing in his body. It was not as much as he would have if he had been placed in a special healing chamber, and it frustrated him that the Earthlings didn't have the technology for the kind of healing chambers that would have restored him past his previous full strength.

_All of that work, and I still there is more work to be done. _

Suddenly, he let out a loud, furious yell, and shot a hot, powerful ball of energy into one of the machines that had but minutes ago been hooked to his body. The Earth Woman let out a strange noise from her nose and moved, but Vegeta ignored it, smirking.

Good. I at least have the strength for that. Then he narrowed his eyes.

_My capsule was destroyed in the blast, but the Briefs Man will have to accommodate me with a new one. I will not put my training on hold for this set back!_

Vegeta took a step forward, and then another, making sure that he was totally capable of walking (how embarrassing it would be should he topple over like he did in front of the Earth Woman earlier) and when he was sure he was stable enough to walk, he quickly strode out of the healing room. He looked left and right, before taking a right and storming down the hall.

"Briefs Man! Briefs Man! _Where are you_?! I demand that you answer me! Briefs Man!" Vegeta continued to shout angrily down the hallway, breaking down every door along the way to see if Dr. Briefs was in any of them.

_Where the blazes is he in this ghastly house?! _

He continued to storm his way down the hallway until he made his way into what the Earthlings called the living room. "Briefs!" he shouted again.

"For Heaven's sakes Vegeta I'm right here!"

Vegeta turned his head, toward the direction of the kitchen, and marched over. Inside, standing beside the blonde Female Briefs next to the "stove," was the Briefs Man. It looked like they were cooking something, and it smelled decent, given it was Earth food.

But Vegeta was not interested in food; he had gone this long without food, there was only one thing on his mind right now.

"I require another capsule immediately," Vegeta shot out. He was not playing any games; he needed to get back to training, and he was never going to get stronger than Kakarrot standing idly around in an Earthling's kitchen.

"Ah, yes," Briefs mused, unperturbed at Vegeta's tone and demeanor. "Yes, it would seem you do. And what do you suppose I'm supposed to do about that?"

Vegeta snarled. "You know very well what I suppose you should do about, Briefs Man, don't play with me! I demand a capsule at once for my training!"

Briefs rolled his eyes, but before he could reply to Vegeta, the Female Briefs spoke up.

"Oh Vegeta, why don't you eat with us? We're making a delicious dinner!" she tittered.

Vegeta scoffed. "Delicious, _I'm sure_. No, Woman, I do not want to eat, I want to train!" He turned back to Briefs. "Now come, make me another capsule this instant, before I lose my temper!"

Briefs pushed his glasses up onto his face. "Vegeta, I may be a genius, but do you honestly think I can just procure a capsule out of thin air in a day?"

Vegeta began to growl. "You will give me another capsule this instant you—"

"I said that I cannot procure a capsule in one day, not that you would not have a capsule today, Vegeta." Briefs interrupted. "I have already fashioned you a new training capsule, equipped with all the new training equipment you have asked for. I finished it up while you were knocked out; I figured you would not stay resting for long. So if you're not going to eat, you're welcome to begin your training immediately, though there is a nice stock of food stashed away in there should you find yourself needing some. You can find your new capsule on the opposite side of the house that your old one was on, fully operational and ready for you."

Briefs turned from Vegeta, who smirked.

"That is all very fortunate for you, Briefs Man," he said, and in a flash he was gone.

Dr. Briefs shook his head. "_How_ many times do I have to tell that boy that he can call me Dr. Briefs?"

Vegeta wasted no time getting settled into his capsule. It was far more spacious and even more equipped than his last one; the Briefs Man had followed through. He had even provided Vegeta with a new set of training clothing, something Vegeta needed desperately, as his old clothes were almost all destroyed.

In addition to being more spacious and being stocked with more and better equipment, there was another thing that this capsule had that the other did not: food. Or at least, what the Briefs Man seemed to consider "food." In a large cooler (a "refrigerator," Vegeta recalled the Earthlings calling it) set on a separate room that could be accessed by a trap door, Vegeta found things like lettuce, cabbage, other strange vegetables, various fruits of the area, rice, beans, and Capsule Corp. Energy Drinks.

_Where the hell is all the meat? _was the only thing he thought as he rummaged through the cooler, only finding containers of Capsule Corp special canned meat.

"Pathetic," he gripped, unimpressed by the food that the Briefs Man had provided him; a Saiyan's diet consisted mostly of meat, and while fruits and vegetables were something Saiyans could eat and did from time to time, how was he supposed to fill himself if the only thing provided to him was the common shrubbery on the planet and, he shuddered at the thought, _meat in cans? _

It didn't matter anyway, he reasoned. He was not at the point where he had to eat yet, and so the only thing he needed to do was train; he would not become a Super Saiyan by standing around and staring at "food."

He made his was back up into the training chamber, a new determination gripping him. He may have nearly ripped himself apart during his training in the other capsule, but he knew better now, and would harder than ever to perfect his technique. He strode over to the gravity machine in the middle of the capsule. Against Briefs' wishes, Vegeta had demanded that there be an increase in the amount of gravity that the capsule could produce; it was not enough that he could train at three hundred times gravity; he needed to be able to push even past those limits, training at up to four hundred times the Earth's gravity.

Vegeta started out by turning the machine up to one hundred times the Earth's gravity, something that even thrust upon him suddenly, he had come to be able to handle effortlessly. He then turned up the force to two hundred times, and then three hundred times, and with each increase, he gauged how his body changed to force. At three hundred, he could feel the pressure in his very core, and he remembered the struggle he faced just to keep his frame up, but the proud prince refused to stop now, not when the opportunity was literally at his fingertips, waiting to test him and see how he faired.

He engaged the machine's highest setting; four hundred times gravity.

As soon as the change was made, Vegeta felt a noticeable difference in how his body felt in this amount of force, and the previous. It was like an entire world was pressing down on his body, eagerly wanting to crush him; the pressure itself caused such intense pain in the very bones of his body, making them feel like they were going to snap, and it was a chore just getting his muscles to move and contract properly. Breathing was laborious, each breath taking hundreds of times more effort to draw in, with each inhale bringing forth stabbing, stitching pain.

"Now… we… sh-shall see…what the Prince…of…Saiyans…is truly… made of!"

_Ugh… cold… wet… slimy…_

"Ah!" Bulma jerked up from her chair, still half asleep, but positively freaked out by something cold and wet making its way down her face. She frantically wiped at her face, trying to get what she was sure was some sort of awful, disgusting slug monster off of her face. It only took her a few good swats to the face to realize that there wasn't an awful slug monster on her face, just her own drool from sleeping.

"Ugh, Bulma you doof," she said to herself, shaking her head. She yawned and stretched a bit, loosening up her muscles in her arms and legs, and finally her neck. Bulma then rubbed her eyes and turned to check on Vegeta.

"Huh? What?" she asked, confused. Vegeta wasn't in his bed! The blankets were messy and the wires that had been monitoring him were laying a crumpled mess. She looked around.

_Maybe he tried to leave but passed out? _

She glanced around at every corner and nook in the room, but there was no Vegeta in sight. The only thing she noticed about the room was the fact that it looked like Vegeta had gone and blasted one of the monitors, probably to make her angry on purpose.

"Ugh!" she burst. "Doesn't that lumpy space ape know how much it costs to make those!? And where the hell does he get off thinking he's ready to start training again!"

Bulma pushed angrily away from the desk and stood up abruptly, causing her chair to topple over. She then stormed out of the room and headed in the direction of the main part of the house. The more steps she took, the more furious she was with Vegeta; not only for destroying equipment that was her father's and hers, but also for being too stubborn and thick-headed to realize when he needed to stop and take a break.

"I swear," she grumbled. "It's like those Saiyans are just asking for death. Goku's exactly the same way! Always needing to train or fight or _die_!"

Bulma grumbled to herself all the way into the main part of the house, where she looked for her father.

"Dad!" she shouted. "Daad! Where are you?!" She checked in the living room, he wasn't there. She checked in the kitchen, and he wasn't there either.

_Where could he be?!_

Bulma was just about to shout for her dad again when she heard a voice coming from down a different hall, towards her father's personal lab.

"Bulma I'm in here! Really dear, there's no need to shout."

Bulma rolled her eyes, but headed towards her father's lab nevertheless. She needed to know just where in the world Vegeta was, and why the _hell_ he wasn't resting; there was no way that the technology in the healing room had healed him as quickly as that, no way! And when she found out where he was, she was going to give him a piece of her mind!

_Warning, gravity exceeds normal human biological tolerance levels. Warning, gravity exceeds normal human biological tolerance levels. Warning…_

For the last two and a half hours, that was the background noise to Vegeta's training. Not ten minutes after he had initially engaged the four hundred time gravity setting on the gravity machine did the annoying mechanical woman's voice start to repeat it over and over, warning him that the setting was past the capability of human biology.

Though it was a nuisance, Vegeta paid it no mind; he would allow nothing to disrupt him during his training this time. With every push up, every sit up, each and every energy blast, and all the pain that came with it, there was nothing that would stop him from attaining his goal.

With this thought in mind, he propelled himself from his one-handed push-up off of the training floor and hovered above it. Some of the most rigorous training had to be done off the ground; he got the most out of forcing his body to fly in the intense pressures of this newest gravity setting.

He was just allowing his body to get more accommodated to working against the gravity in midair when a screen popped up in the middle of the chamber, and the angry, blue haired Earth Woman was on it, and she was quick to shout out.

"Stop it, Vegeta! You are in no condition to be doing this right now!" she barked out at him. Vegeta continued to spin himself in the air, grumbling at the fact that, somehow, even in here, the Earth Woman found a way to pester him about things that were none of her concern. Perhaps if he ignored her, she'd go away…

"I know you don't want to believe it but you are made of flesh and blood!" she continued. Now, she was really aggravating him.

Vegeta stopped in mid-spin, leaving him hanging upside down. He didn't care; all he wanted was for this pesky Earth Female to go away.

"Stop pestering me Woman! Leave me _alone_!" he shot back. He was having none of this shit today; especially not from the likes of the blue haired one. Unfortunately, his response came with a price. His body was already under stress from having not fully healed, and his pull from focus, even temporarily, caused him to fall out of the air and painfully hit the floor with a loud smack. The full front of his body took the brunt of the damage, and he groaned in pain and frustration.

"You know I'm right so why don't you just keep quiet and _do as I say_?" she shot right back, not pausing for a second to continue her incessant aggravations. "Nothing to say?" she sneered when Vegeta failed to reply, still struggling under the pressure. "Well good. Now go back to bed and get some rest."

Vegeta was beyond pissed and annoyed at this point, and managed to get out a small retort. "Not yet I do have something to say"

The Earth Woman looked concerned. "Huh? What is something wrong?" But then her demeanor changed and she looked smug. "Or maybe you're going to apologize to me? If that's the case let's hear it!" she said, as proudly as if she had just won a battle.

Vegeta mustered up the last bit of energy he had left and yelled "Leave. Me. _Alone_!"

The Earth Woman's face scrunched up, and it looked like she was… hurt? Yes, that was the emotion that the Earthlings called that expression. Hurt, emotionally or something like that.

Vegeta didn't have any time to care (or rather, not care, really) because before he could hear the next thing to come out of the Earth Woman's mouth, everything around him started getting dark, and he blacked out.

_Gravity simulation disengaging, returning to normal gravity. Gravity simulation disengaging, returning to normal gravity. Gravity simulation disengaging, returning to normal gravity in T minus ten… nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… Gravity now at normal levels, it is safe to leave the capsule. Thank you for choosing Capsule Corp as your main source for the ages finest technological advances. _

Vegeta groaned from the floor and rolled over, breathing heavily. He had been going between periods of consciousness and unconsciousness, unable to move. When he was cognizant, he cursed his present condition—and the Earth Woman and her meddling—and when he passed out, each consequent time he was gripped with nightmares worse than the ones he had during his time healing.

He hadn't realized it before, but he was in worse condition than he had originally thought, that was for certain. This planet's pathetic healing technology was no help, either, and while he knew he would heal relatively quickly, it wasn't quick enough for his liking.

He groaned in frustration again, propping himself up on his elbows. He had more strength than earlier in the four hundred times gravity, but that was only because the gravity levels had gone back to normal.

Of one thing Vegeta was certain, he needed to find a way to heal quickly, and he needed to find it soon, otherwise his training was going to take a serious hit and he would never be able to accumulate enough power to become a Super Saiyan, let alone defeat the Androids in three years.


	4. Chapter 4

When Vegeta got the strength he needed to get up, he made his way down below in the Capsule. He needed to find a way to speed up his healing, but the only thing that would give him the results that he wanted were the medical tanks of his home world, and those strange beans that Kakarrot always seemed to have handy. The beans would be helpful, Vegeta knew, but he had made use of them before and while they restored one's previous strength, they did not quite surpass it. The next best thing would be the medical tanks; though it took longer to heal in one than it did by simply eating one of those beans, the effects were worth the hours of waiting.

The problem with his two theories, he came to realize as he rummaged through the cooler looking for something half decent, was that according to the one called Yaijourobi, there were no more beans left, at least not until the cat creature that made them had finished them, and who knew how long that would take? Not to mention there were no such healing devices like the medical tanks on this wretch of a planet.

Vegeta continued to contemplate his options as he started shoving random bits of food into his mouth; nothing much of what he ate was very good—not even the canned meat, unsurprisingly—but he had been ignoring his hunger for far too long and, for once, he could afford to eat something, even if it was disgusting vegetables and subpar meat.

When Vegeta had finished consuming everything in the cooler but the cans that actually held the meat, he stood up and folded his arms across his chest. He still hadn't figured out a solution to his current problem, and that frustrated him.

If only that Bulma woman hadn't interrupted him during his session! He was sure he would have been able to push through his injuries had he not been distracted by her. The only thing that annoyed him more than the fact that she had distracted him was the fact that he had allowed himself to become distracted. He should not have made it so easy for his focus to have been pulled away from his training, and his contempt for that woman was proving to be more of a handicap than he originally thought.

_It will be a great day when I am finally rid of her and this pathetic planet. _

Now that he was full, Vegeta decided that he would shower; much like his eating habits, his grooming habits had gone by the wayside since he had begun training. He figured since he had already taken this much time off, he might as well shower, too. After all, nothing helps one think more than a hot shower.

Vegeta turned down a little hallway that was set off of where the cooler and small kitchen was, which led him straight to the bathroom. It was pretty spacious, but he had seen better.

He quickly stripped and turned on the water in the shower as hot as he could stand, and stepped into the shower. It had been a while since he had taken a shower or bathed in any capacity, and he had almost forgotten how amazing it felt. As the hot water ran down his body, he started contemplating where he should go from there.

_There's no way I can continue the kind of training I need to in my present condition; I could wait until I'm fully healed, but that will take a few days at least, and if this ever happens again, I'll continue to lose days, a loss I cannot afford. Those strange beans are out of the question… I must acquire a medical tank somehow. _

As this thought crossed his head, something occurred to him, and he could have kicked himself for how long it took him to realize it.

He would just get the Bulma woman or the Briefs man to fashion him a medical tank! He's seen the things that they've invented; something like that shouldn't be too far out of reach, even for a pair of annoying Earthlings like them. Surely they could create one for him with similar properties as the ones on Planet Vegeta. Even if it took a week for them to build it, the loss of time would be easily made up by gain of time due to having that kind of healing technology at his disposal.

Vegeta made up his mind; that was the only course of action he could take at this time. His training was far too intense and too important to pass up an opportunity like this. He reached down and twisted the faucet, turning the water off. He then stepped out of the shower and walked over to the closet just across from it, took out a towel and dried himself off. He also found some new—non-tattered—training clothes just like the ones he was wearing before and decided he'd put those on instead of his dirty old ones. He also found a pair of sneakers and clean socks; the Briefs man had stocked his capsule well.

When Vegeta was done getting dressed, he figured that it was time to get to business. There could be no more time wasted, he needed his medical tank worked on _now_.

"Uh huh… yeah… no, that's fine, it's no problem… yes I'll tell him… three weeks? Ok… Yes, thank you, you have a great day as well."

Bulma hung up the phone in the living room and sighed. She had been taking calls for her father all day from other companies, answering questions, taking orders, all the things she absolutely _despised _about the business world. Capsule Corp had just released a new product, and of course every technology vender in the market wanted to order stock for their stores, rich people wanted customized orders, press wanted interviews…

It was all exasperating. Her father usually handled those kinds of things, but he was swamped with multiple custom orders and tweaks of old products, two things he always handled personally. So of course, Bulma took up the negotiations, question answering, and memos so that her father wouldn't fall behind.

"Running a business really does make you want to take a vacation more often than not," she sighed to herself. Between dealing with the phone ringing off the hook and her already off-put mood by the way Vegeta was acting, she really was ready for a vacation right about now.

Ugh, Vegeta. He hadn't been out of his capsule for two days since he had yelled at her to leave him alone, and she could only imagine what kind of insane training he was doing there. That or he was still passed out, which at this point wouldn't surprise her given his painful lack of self-preservation.

Bulma sighed. She couldn't understand why she even bothered caring about his well-being in the first place. He was proud, arrogant, _rude_, impossible to deal with most days, and had at one point tried to kill her best friend, not to mention the fact that him and his goons had killed Yamcha, Tien, Chaotzu, _and_ Piccolo, all in the span of a couple of hours. He showed no gratitude to anyone, no real emotion besides anger, and couldn't even call her Bulma, for crying out loud. It was always "Woman this" and "Woman that," non-stop.

But despite all that, she felt _sorry_ for him. From what she heard about what went on down on Namek from Gohan, Vegeta had experienced what could only be described as a hard life. She could only imagine how it would feel having the entirety of your race being completely destroyed, and then being lied to about it by the person who did the destroying and the ordering of the death of your people. Then there was the whole issue with Goku, something she could at least to an extent empathize with; she knew how torn up inside she'd be if someone she didn't think was worthy bested her at everything she did. She understood the drive behind Vegeta's actions, even if they're life-threatening.

"Ugh, there is too much on my mind already to be thinking about that man!"

"What man?" a familiar voice asked from behind her. She jumped and turned, and was amazed when she saw Vegeta leaning against the door frame across from her, smug as ever. He looked like he had cleaned himself up, and he even had on clean clothes.

Her face reddened. _Of course he'd walk in on me while I was thinking about him_, she thought before saying hastily, "No one that you know, Vegeta."

He rolled his eyes. "Whatever, Woman. I didn't come in here to talk about your love life anyway, I want something from you," he barked.

_Of course you do_. She folded her arms over her chest, demeanor instantly changing. "What else is new? Let me guess, you broke your capsule again? It can't be because you're in here to apologize for being rude, no, that would be too simple."

Vegeta scowled. "I haven't broken the capsule Woman. I want you to build me a medical tank like the ones from my home world. They have the power to fully restore a person to the peak of their health in a mere few hours. They were what made Kakarrot heal fully and give him strength past what he had before he went in. If I'm going to continue my training at the pace that I'm going, I need it."

Bulma was intrigued. Was he really asking for something that would… heal him, as opposed to beating the shit out of and potentially killing him?

There was only one problem. "Ok, I'm listening. But I've never even seen one of these medical tanks Vegeta. How on Earth am I supposed to replicate technology I have no experience with?"

Vegeta shrugged. "Aren't you supposed to be a genius or something? Figure it out," he said turning around. "I expect it to be done in a week."

Bulma was shocked. "Um, hold up right there Vegeta, don't you walk away!" she yelled. Vegeta turned around with an angry look on his face, but that didn't deter Bulma. "You have literally given me nothing to work with, and you expect me to magically produce some weird medical tank out of thin air? Are you kidding me? Also, do you know how much work I have? I do have a business you know, my job is not taking care of you and bowing to your every whim Mr. Saiyan Prince. Perhaps if you'd, I dunno, give me some information to go on, I could get it done in a couple of weeks, but one week with no information is not going to happen Vegeta; there's a lot of things I can do, but what you are asking is not one of them."

"I don't care what information you need, I just want it done, Woman," was the only thing Vegeta had to say. Bulma huffed.

"Come on. We'll need to go to my lab for this."

Bulma turned away from Vegeta and headed in the direction of her room from the living room. She kind of wish he had just stayed shut up in his capsule; she didn't know how long it would take her to build this medical tank he was asking for, and adding this project onto the ones she was already working on was going to be hell.

Of course, she could have just told him no, but she didn't think that would have gone anywhere, and it would be much better for her to take this time building the medical tank for him than it would to just continue letting him beat himself up and end up on the brink of death again. Her options were pretty limited, in that she really only had one.

"How much farther Woman, I'm getting impatient," Vegeta barked from behind her. She rolled her eyes.

"My personal lab is off of my room; that's where we're going. I'll collect all the information there, figure some things out, and I'll be able to tell you about how long construction will take. Is that ok with you, _Your Majesty_?" she asked sarcastically.

"Whatever," Vegeta replied.

They continued on in silence until they got to Bulma's room. As she walked in she turned to Vegeta.

"I have some important stuff in here; _don't_ break anything," she warned.

He scowled. "I wouldn't _dream_ of it."

Bulma resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him and proceeded on into her room. Prototypes of all of her inventions were up on shelves around the room, and she glanced around at them proudly as she headed towards the back of her room, where there was a small doorway that led into a separate room.

Her personal lab was pretty simple; equipped with a large desk, a couple of machines, and several white boards and cork boards filled with notes and blue prints, this was where she spent more of her time calculating and making plans for things at Capsule Corp.

Bulma took a seat at her desk where her main computer was. She looked up at Vegeta.

"You can sit down you know."

"I'd rather stand."

Bulma huffed but said nothing. _Suit yourself, tough guy… _

Bulma hit some buttons and let her computer warm up. It let out a low hum before the screen lit up and a mechanical voice said: "Welcome back Ms. Briefs, how may I help you today?"

"Hello Computer. Can you open up the file 'Vegeta' for me please? I have another project to add to it."

"Yes Miss, of course."

From beside her, Vegeta spoke up. "You have a file on me?"

"More like a file for you. The specs on your training equipment, the two capsules, all that stuff," she explained.

"Hm," was all he said.

"File Vegeta is open Miss. You may proceed," the computer voice said.

"Thanks computer, that will be all," Bulma replied. She then opened up a new project document and turned to Vegeta. "I don't supposed you know how to draw, do you?"

Vegeta raised an eyebrow, confused. "You're asking me if I'm an artist?"

Bulma sighed impatiently. "This 'medical tank' or whatever you're asking me to build, I've never seen one Vegeta. So I need a basic outline of what it looks like so I have something to go off of."

"I _don't _draw," Vegeta replied crossly. Bulma rolled her eyes.

"Then can you _explain_? I can at least get a rough sketch out if you can describe it to me."

"Whatever."

The next half hour was spent with Bulma trying very hard not to lose her cool. For someone who wasn't an artist, Vegeta was very snobby when it came to how her drawing came out.

"I didn't say that went there… that doesn't even look like what I said…"

Bulma had to resist the urge to pull her hair out and tell Vegeta to go stuff it through the entire process and was beyond relieved when it was all done. It wasn't her best work, but it would do. She fed the image through the scanner beside her computer, and in three seconds the image of the medical tank popped up on the screen.

"Ok, all I need now is some basic information about the machine itself, starting with the liquid that's in it," Bulma said. "I don't suppose you have any idea what its composition is, do you?"

"Not a clue."

"Hm," Bulma mused. This was going to be tricky. "I could probably find something similar here on Earth if you could tell me basic properties of it."

That proved less successful than Bulma thought it'd be. Other than knowing the color and what it did to the body, Vegeta knew little to nothing about what the substance was made of; Bulma was basically starting from scratch, a fact that was proved when she entered all the data she was able to get from Vegeta. As she feared, her computer calculated that it would take quite some time to come up with a formula for the substance she needed for the machine—an entire three months just for that, not including the time needed to be spent building and testing the actual machine itself. This was a fact that did not please Vegeta in the slightest.

"Three months! I don't have that kind of time, Woman!" he shouted out angrily when he saw the estimation pop up on the computer screen.

Bulma looked up at him, annoyed. "Well, what do you expect? It's not like I have a lot of information to go on, Vegeta. This kind of stuff takes time, you know."

Vegeta huffed, annoyed. Bulma found herself softening her expression again.

"Look. There's a chance I could probably create a formula of my own, but it would take time. Less than three months, but still. If you have a tiny bit of patience… I could probably get the formula down in four weeks. Meanwhile I'll send these specs over to my father and he could take a look and see how long it'd take to build the actual tank itself. It's a better bet than letting the computer do the work, but seriously, you need to give us some time, Vegeta."

Bulma watched cautiously as Vegeta contemplated what Bulma had just told him. She could tell he didn't like waiting four weeks just as much as he didn't like the idea of waiting three months. Unfortunately for Vegeta, those were the numbers, and he would have to deal with it.

"Uh, fine," he finally conceded. "Just get it done soon, am I understood?"

Bulma waved him away. "Whatever Vegeta. Go away so I can start, unless you want more delays."

Bulma didn't wait for him to reply, as she turned back to her computer and began typing in parameters. She vaguely heard him say something, but when she turned around next, he was gone.

_This is going to be a long couple of weeks_, she thought to herself wearily.

After three hours of working, Bulma was still diligently sitting at her computer typing away and making calculations. She had about half of the formula for the tank liquid figured out, but there were components that needed to be worked on—mostly ones that dealt with the actual healing aspect of the liquid—that were giving her trouble. She had already worked out the general layout and function of the machine itself, and with any luck her father had taken a look at them for her and figured out a reasonable time line.

The good thing about all this work was that at least she was doing something to help out; if she could help Vegeta train in any kind of capacity, then she was making a good contribution, even if he wouldn't be grateful for it.

The only problem that Bulma seemed to be having was coming up with the missing components for the liquid, and at this point that was the one thing that was going to end up slowing her down. She couldn't seem to find any kind of substance that was quite like the kind that Vegeta had explained to her, and it was looking more and more like she was going to have to synthesize one up herself, and who knew how long that would take.

Bulma wracked her brains for an idea, recalled everything she had ever heard Vegeta say about the tank, the liquid, or anything else that might be helpful to her.

The something occurred to her, something that would definitely either be a hit or a miss.

She knew that Saiyans healed fast, way faster than humans did. If she could find a way to isolate the specific cells in a Saiyan that did that, she could probably finish her formula.

Of course, that would involve asking Vegeta for his cells, something that she didn't know would be easy. She leaned back in her chair and sighed.

It was a long shot, but she would have to try.

She finished up the notes she had been working on, turned off her computer, and headed out of her room and through the house towards her father's lab. She didn't have any supply of hypodermic needles in her personal lab, but her father was sure to have some.

It didn't take her long to find a clean one in her father's lab in a sterile package; he had an entire drawer full of them for when he needed to collect biological samples for bioengineering projects that Capsule Corp occasionally did.

Her father was nowhere to be seen, but Bulma figured that he was off in the main labs working on something important, so she didn't bother looking for him. She made her way out of his lab and headed down the hallway towards the East side of the house, where Vegeta's capsule was and where he was sure to be.

However, when Bulma got to the capsule, there was no one in there. She looked all around from the actual training area to down below where the kitchen and bathroom was, but there was no Vegeta in sight.

She was about to give up looking and call it quits as she searched the training part of the capsule, when the capsule door opened and in stepped Vegeta.

"What are _you_ doing in here?" he asked harshly.

"Looking for you, obviously," retorted Bulma. Vegeta rolled his eyes and walked further into the capsule.

"What for? Aren't you supposed to be doing something?"

Bulma scowled. "That's why I'm here, you moron," she said as she waved the hypodermic needle in front of her face. "If I'm going to finish this formula for the medical tank, I'm going to need to collect some of your blood cells; you Saiyans have the ability to heal pretty fast, and if I can isolate those cells and amplify their effects, I can probably get on with finishing all of this up faster than what I originally thought."

Vegeta stood there for a moment and thought. "And all you need for this is my blood?" he asked.

Bulma nodded.

"Fine, take what you need," Vegeta said, holding an arm out to Bulma.

Bulma walked up to him, unwrapping the needle as she went. "Now, this might sting a bit," she said as she felt for a vein in the crease of Vegeta's elbow. He snickered.

"Right."

Bulma just rolled her eyes, and when she found a vein, inserted the needle into Vegeta's arm. She expected him to at least jump a little, but it was like it didn't faze him in the least.

"Told you so," Vegeta said as if reading her mind.

"Whatever."

When Bulma had collected what she felt would be enough, she removed the needle from Vegeta's arm and pulled a Band-Aid from her pocket and handed it to him. "Here," she said. "This is for you."

Vegeta rubbed the inside of his arm, but shook his head.

"I don't need that. Just take what you got and be gone; you have work to do." He walked past her toward the trap door and Bulma scowled.

_Why do I even bother, _she thought bitterly as she exited the capsule so that she could finish her work.


	5. Chapter 5

Vegeta sat alone in his capsule against the cooler down below, as he had been for the last hour or so since Bulma had taken the blood she needed to continue on with her experimentation. He had slowly begun to realize that he had been knocked out longer than he had originally thought—_two full days_, he thought disgustedly—and was brooding and angry at the weakness that he was experiencing.

What had it taken for Kakarrot to become a Super Saiyan? What had it taken for him to push past the normal boundaries of Saiyan power and become the pinnacle of their shared race? There was nothing that that son of a low level thug had done that he, the Prince of all Saiyans, could not do…

_He defeated Freiza, _a cynical voice in the back of his mind taunted. _He defeated Freiza while you lay dead in the ground, too weak to kill the lizard yourself. What would your father say? _

Vegeta scowled and shook his head, trying to shake out the tormenting voice and its words. But it was right. He had let Kakarrot fight a battle that was his, had let that Saiyan _rat_ surpass him in every facet of his being. He had even allowed Kakarrot to glimpse inside his innermost demons, allowed him to see the flood of pain and anguish he felt deep within.

Why?

When had he become so weak? When had he, Prince Vegeta, stooped so low?

It had not been enough that Kakarrot showed him up by defeating the Ginyu Force, no, there had to be more, there was always _fucking_ more, wasn't there?

Vegeta clenched his fists at his sides and threw his head back into the cooler angrily, positive that he left a huge dent but not finding it within himself to give a damn.

All that power… and that pure, raw, _energy_!

It needed to be his. It was _supposed_ to be his; achieving the Super Saiyan form was his birthright above anything and everything else!

So why had he not accomplished it?

For his entire life, the only thing he had ever known was this kind of brutal, bone-breaking, skin-tearing, moral-shattering training. At the end of the day every fiber of his muscles ached, every joint of his body screamed out in pain when he moved. He had given up food and water, shower and rest for training. Did he not deserve to bask in the glory and reap the rewards? There was no one in the galaxy that had been through what he had been through, and there was no one more deserving than him for the goal to become a Super Saiyan.

Kakarrot would not take this victory from him. He would sooner die than face _that _humiliation. There was no point in living if he had to live as second class to someone as low-ranking as Kakarrot.

Vegeta stood, letting a harsh flow of air escape his nostrils. If he still had his tail it would have twitched, mimicking the agitation of its master. His frustration welled up inside him and he set out to do the only thing he knew how to do in a situation like this.

He went above to train.

"Vegeta! Hello, Vegeta are you in there?" A disheveled and tired looking Bulma walked all around Vegeta's capsule, rapping her tiny fist on its haul. She had tried to get in—she needed to tell Vegeta the good news, that the timeline for his medical tank was shorter than anticipated—but the hatch to the capsule had been locked from the inside it seemed, and—curse her father—the only way to unlock it was from the inside as well.

Bulma let out an agitated huff as she stood in front of the towering circular contraption. She had literally spent the last seventy-two hours doing nothing but downing large amounts of coffee and tediously studying Vegeta's blood. She hadn't thought she could do it, but in the early hours of that morning, she found exactly what she had needed to complete her formula.

She had originally thought she would need to find a specific thing, which made her dread attempting the task given that it took most scientists _years_ to isolate single genes among trillions, let alone work on those genes; it might not have taken a genius like her that long, but still, biology was tricky sometimes. The interesting thing she found, however, was that Vegeta's blood—Saiyan blood—didn't have a specific gene that accounted for their rapid healing, they had an entirely separate component within their blood solely responsible for the feat.

With a little bit of study of the component, she found that the cells that comprised of it were almost entirely Saiyan stem cells. She had a hunch about how they worked to heal things like wounds and bruises, but actually proving that theory would have to come later while she was trying to figure out a way to combine that component with what she already had.

At the moment, however, her main concern was just what the hell Vegeta was doing. She was under the impression he wasn't going to do anymore training until the medical tank was done; after all, the entire reason for his coming and asking—demanding—that she design and build one for him was so that he could train unhindered, or as she understood it, so he could beat himself to a bloody pulp and to near death with a sure-fire way of keeping himself alive.

Surely he wasn't so impatient that he would just start training again without him knowing when everything would be done, would he?

Bulma wasn't so sure.

She resumed pounding on the haul of the capsule and shouting for Vegeta for what seemed like an eternity before the hatch opened. She darted out of the way so that she wouldn't get squashed, and when the hatch finally lowered, she peeked her head around.

Vegeta was standing above her and looking down with an extremely annoyed look on his face. He looked like he had just gotten out of the shower; his body was dripping with water and his usually straight-standing hair was weighed down by the liquid. A towel was wrapped around his waist securely, and she found herself forcing her eyes away from a wonderfully defined V-shape at the base of his abs and back up to his angry face.

"Woman, what on Earth is the reason for your _insufferable_ yelling?" he barked down at her.

Bulma glared up at him.

"If you want to know I have good news for you," she yelled right back. Vegeta folded his arms over his chest and his annoyed look lessened slightly.

"Well? What is it then?"

Bulma rolled her eyes. "Not so fast, Mister. Were you training in there? I thought you were smart enough to know when to give it a rest, Vegeta." Vegeta narrowed his eyes.

"And I thought you were smart enough by now to know that you need to stop trying to pry into my business, Woman."

They stood there, angry eyes locked on each other, unblinking and unwavering. After a few moments, Bulma sighed and crossed her arms.

"Look, I just came to tell you we have a timeline for everything. And, if you wanted to know, some really cool stuff about your blood. Obviously you're too busy to care about such _silly_ things, so I'm going to leave you to beat yourself up again. Don't die before I actually have the right technology to heal you, you jerk," she spat. Bulma turned on her heel and started to march back towards her house, fuming at the fact that Vegeta—the one who had asked for the damned medical tank in the first place—was just throwing himself back into training without waiting for her to tell him what was going on.

Why were men so stupid?!

She had almost reached the side door of her house when she felt a presence beside her. She turned to her left, and there was Vegeta. He was no longer in a towel, but had somehow in the span of little under a minute, changed into his usual training clothes. She raised an eyebrow.

"What are you doing?" she asked harshly.

Vegeta didn't look back at her, but he replied. "You say you have information and a timeline. I want to know exactly what the hell you've been doing for the last three days."

Bulma pulled open the door to her house as he said this and stepped in with Vegeta behind her. She ignored him, however, and continued on the path towards her lab where her discoveries had been made. She resisted the urge to tell Vegeta to fuck off; he sounded as if he thought what she was doing was silly or useless, and her past seventy two hours of little to no sleep were far from silly _or_ useless.

She knew however there was no point in arguing with Vegeta; he wouldn't listen anyway and she was already in a bad mood from lack of sleep and didn't feel like having to deal with his bullshit, so she continued on in silence until they got to her room. She pushed open the door harshly and stomped in, kicking dirty clothes out of her way as she went.

_I really need to work on my house keeping skills_, she thought absently to herself as she walked through the pass to her personal lab.

_That_ particular area of her room was not much better off than her actual room, with more soda cans and empty food plates littering a good portion of her work surfaces. She could hear Vegeta scoff behind her, but committed to her stance on ignoring him for the time being and sat down at her computer.

The scene was very similar to the last time she had brought Vegeta here: push a couple of buttons, the computer greets her, blah blah blah, pulling up Vegeta's file…

"There," she said, pointing to the computer screen when the document she wanted had been pulled up, "is the general timeline for not only the machine, but also the liquid that will go in it. Two and a half weeks for everything, and mind you, the only reason it's not going to take so long is because my father and I have put all our other projects on hold to do so." She turned to Vegeta, looking for a reaction, but saw he was just intently staring at the screen. "Well?" she prompted after a few moments.

"It's adequate," he shrugged. Her face morphed into a scowl.

"I have gotten barely any sleep for the last three days and all you can say is adequate?" She snapped away from him, shaking furiously. The nerve of this guy!

Trying to suppress her mounting frustrations, she clicked through a couple of other documents and pulled up the one she had compiled with all the information dealing with Vegeta's blood.

"Here, entertain yourself. I'm off to go work on your 'adequate' medical tank," she said tersely as she stood up and pushed past Vegeta. Without warning, he grabbed her arm.

"You know, you really need to stop grabbing me Vege—"

"I can't read this," he said, pointing at the screen with his other hand.

She turned and looked at him in surprise. "What do you mean you can't read this?"

He gave her an annoyed look. "I mean, Woman, that while I speak in the Common Tongue, Saiyans never learned to read it. I can read in the Saiyan language, but not this garbage you've put in front of me."

Bulma was silent for a moment, unable to fully comprehend what he was saying. She had always just assumed that Vegeta knew how to read; after all he never showed signs of not knowing how to.

"How do you function?" she asked. Vegeta let go of her arm and folded his arms tightly across his chest.

"I function just fine. There's no reason for me to read; all communication I have is verbal, what is the point of learning your silly scribbles?"

Bulma rolled her eyes. "The point is that now I have to explain all of this to you as opposed to you just reading it yourself, you moron."

Vegeta scoffed. "Weren't you going to explain it to me anyway, Woman?"

That remark stopped the retort that was hot on Bulma's tongue; he had a point, she had intended to just explain it to him herself anyway.

_Damn it Vegeta_!

"Fine, whatever. Sit down you jerk and maybe I can teach you a thing or two about yourself."

Unlike earlier, Vegeta actually took a seat on the stool that was beside Bulma's work chair. He bent one leg over the other and kept his arms pulled against his chest. He looked more like a stuck-up, self-centered prince than he ever had, Bulma wagered, and thought that at least he was looking more and more like himself as opposed to broken and battered and near death like he had been lately.

_Perhaps he hadn't been training after all,_ she mused as she scanned through her notes looking for the information that she wanted to share.

"Ah, here we are," she muttered when she found it. She ran her eyes over it to make sure that she wouldn't leave anything else and then turned to Vegeta. "Ok. Basically, it seems that there's not just regular blood that runs through your veins—Saiyan veins. It seems as though there's another component within the make-up that's made of stem cells and—"

"What the hell are stem cells?" Vegeta interrupted. Bulma pinched the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes tightly before letting out a frustrated sigh.

"The easiest way to describe them—because mind you, biology and all that junk is not my specialty—is cells that can become whatever they need to become. When you're an embryo—"

"A what?"

"For Kami's sake Vegeta quit interrupting!" Bulma shouted, and continued on before Vegeta could say anything else. "When you're an embryo—when you're forming in your mother's uterus before you're born—you have tons of these, and as you develop they specialize and become your organs and tissues and stuff. As an adult you have them too, but not as many, though it seems that Saiyans have adapted to have stores of these cells along with a special kind of catalyzing agent, which brings me to my next point.

"It seems as though, when you're healthy and relatively uninjured, these cells and the other component are lying dormant in your Saiyan body. From what I know of human stem cells and what I've seen in studying yours, it looks as though yours have adapted to facilitate your rapid healing—for example, you get a cut, the stem cells in the area of your cut become the kind of cells on that part of your body. I'm pretty sure that since you Saiyans heal bone fractures and all sorts of other stuff quickly, that you have these special cells everywhere in your body.

"_Obviously_ I'm not doing to go in and take more samples unless I need them, but I _can_ isolate this component and the stem cells in the blood I've taken from you, synthesize more and that can be used for your medical tank as a kind of catalyst to speed up your healing. Hence, my father and I should be done with it before the month ends, and _you_ can go back to insane training without killing yourself every time." She finished her spiel with a smile on her face, satisfied that Vegeta had chosen not to interrupt her again.

Vegeta of course just stood there emotionless to what she said he was still glaring at the computer screen—even though he couldn't read a lick of what was on it—as if he was trying to make it explode with his mind or something like those heroes you saw on TV. After a moment of silence and not even a single thank you, Bulma spoke up.

"Um, anything you have to say there, buddy? Or are you just going to stand there looking like a buffoon?"

Vegeta tore his eyes from the computer screen with enough time to give her a curt look before turning promptly on his heel.

"Come get me when everything is done. Until then, don't bother me Woman."

Bulma didn't have time to throw something at the back of his head or yell various colorful curse words at him because as soon as he said that, he vanished in a flash and left such a gust behind him that any loose papers that had been lying around flew about the room before finally settling down in ever bigger disarray than they had before. Bulma grimaced, annoyed at both the new mess she would eventually have to clean and at the fact that she now how to fix her hair thanks to Vegeta's "dramatic" exit.

"Men," she spat out bitterly, tangling her fingers in her wild curly bush of hair attempting to undo Vegeta's damage. When that didn't work—in fact, she had only made it much, much worse; she now had mats the size of her palms in her blue locks—she gave up with a frustrated yell, found a pair of scissors in a pile of office supplies on the floor, and set off to her bathroom to do some re-beautification of her hair; she needed a new look anyway.

An hour and a half later, Bulma emerged from her bathroom wrapped in a towel, both looking and feeling positively relaxed. As she walked over to her bed and plopped down, she ran her fingers through her newly washed and cut hair. It was a bit of a drastic style, a short one, but it was cute and in a bob and she liked it, so that was all that mattered.

As she at the edge of her bed playing with her silky, freshly washed hair, there was a gentle knock at her door.

"Bulma? Hey, you in there?" Bulma quirked an eyebrow up.

_Yamcha? _

"Uh yeah, come in it's unlocked," she called back, turning her body towards her door and pulling her legs under her.

Yamcha stepped in and gently shut the door behind him. He was in regular clothes today, which surprised Bulma; wasn't he training like everyone else?

He turned and leaned his back against the door, hands in his tan slacks pockets and a cheesy looking fedora on his head. He at least had a nice shirt on, a silky looking button down; Bulma was pretty sure it was one she had bought for him.

Bulma was a bit taken aback by his presence; when was the last time she saw him? It couldn't have been that long ago…

"What's with the new look Bulma, trying to impress someone?" Yamcha quipped playfully when she didn't say anything. She blinked a couple of time before speaking.

"Why are you here?" she asked. She didn't mean to sound harsh, but it came out that way, and as soon as she said it, Yamcha's face fell. Bulma immediately felt guilty.

"I didn't mean it like that Yamcha," she amended. "It's just I haven't seen you in forever…"

Yamcha rolled his eyes. "It's been a week Bulma. Hardly forever."

Bulma pursed her lips. A week? It seemed like it had been longer than that...

"Hm," was the only thing she said. Yamcha shrugged.

"Anyway, I figured I'd see what you were up to; you haven't been around since Vegeta's little accident," he said, his last words coming out venomously. Something told Bulma that Yamcha probably wished that Vegeta had just offed himself, and that annoyed her a bit.

"Yeah, well, you know me, I keep myself busy when I'm not off helping Goku save the world," she said nonchalantly.

There was an awkward silence after this, and Bulma fidgeted in her place. She didn't know why it was awkward; there had been plenty of times she'd been around Yamcha in just a towel, and after all, it wasn't like they weren't dating.

After a few moments, Bulma spoke up. "I'm gonna get dressed and finish up some of this work that I have," she said scooting herself off her bed. Off to the side she heard Yamcha push off the door, but ignored him.

Bulma got to her closet and reached in with just enough time to barely grab a shirt before Yamcha pulled her towards him.

"Come on Bulma, you've been working all week, take a break," he whined, turning her around and bringing her in for a kiss. She grimaced a turned around in his arms and broke out of his embrace.

"Not tonight Yamcha, I'm really busy." She went back and grabbed the shirt Yamcha had prevented her from getting, as well as pair of shorts she could work comfortably in. She heard him huff behind her, and as she went to her dresser to find a bra, she knew the water works and the complaining were about to begin.

"Bulma come on, you can stop working for just a little bit. We can go out to dinner, see a movie or something…" he trailed off.

Bulma snorted as she shuffled through her drawer, finally finding a bra that she liked. She dropped her towel and with quick hands she had her bra on in no time. She turned to face Yamcha as she pulled up the shorts she had picked out and then stood straight with her arms folded.

"Yeah, dinner and a movie sounds lovely until the cute waitress walks by and starts flirting, or until one of your fan-girls recognizes you in the movie theatre and you have to have a conversation with her about your baseball career. Remember the last time we did the whole dinner and movie thing Yamcha? No thanks," she said, scowling and remembering that awful night. It would have really been lovely; Yamcha had just been wished back from the dead and they had planned out an entire night for the two of them. Unfortunately, Yamcha's tendency to get distracted by other women put a damper on the entire affair, and Bulma couldn't even say that reunion sex had made up for it, given that it was awkward and sloppy and just unpleasant in general.

At least, it had been for her. Yamcha enjoyed the piss out of himself while she had to resort to sneaking off after he fell asleep to finish the job.

_Yeah_, she thought to herself as she pulled her shirt over her head. _Not my idea of a good time_.

Across from her, Yamcha pouted.

"Oh come on Bulma, it's not my fault if women throw themselves at me!"

Bulma threw Yamcha a scathing look. "No, but it _is_ your fault when you don't do anything to send them away Yamcha. If you want to do something nice for me, bring me some food to the main compound for dinner and you can hang out with me there; I really have a lot to do, I can't go out tonight," she sighed, hoping that he would understand and quit begging her to go out.

"Is that what you want?" he asked. Bulma nodded.

"Yeah, actually. I haven't had a decent meal in the work room in a while," she said, thinking back to the plates in her personal lab that had once been laden with dehydrated meals. She almost shivered in disgust at the down-grade in cuisine she had submitted herself to in order to make sure she could get through her recent project with Vegeta.

Yamcha smiled at her. "Well, I can cook if that's what you want and we can hang out in the lab," he conceded. He opened up his arms and offered her a hug, which she accepted, and he exited her room whistling a tune.

The tight grin that Bulma had been wearing on her face vanished, and she slowly slouched onto the floor of her room.

When Yamcha had been wished back, she thought things would be different. After all, nothing says "hey, I love you" like searching the planet for magical spheres that grant you wishes in order to bring your dead boyfriend back to life. And for a while she had thought things had changed. They would spend time together, do the things they liked to do, all that kind of couple-y stuff that Bulma had missed when Yamcha had been dead.

But it didn't take long for Yamcha to slip back into his old ways and start flirting with other girls, and unlike in the past, he now had the nerve to do it in front of her this go-around. And worse now than ever, he had adapted this whiny, clingy persona that demanded that she just… drop everything she was doing with the corporation whenever he wanted to do something. It wasn't just this week or the last, but every other week prior, as if she didn't already have enough to do without Yamcha trying to get her to do one thing or another.

She heaved herself up off the floor, deciding that she would think more about her relationship with Yamcha later. Right now she had a deadline to meet, and she was sure that Yamcha would be the least of her worries if she didn't get to working on the tank for Vegeta.

Between these two men, she was sure she was going to die before she was old enough to start getting grey hair.

_Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine… ten thousand_.

Vegeta lay sprawled out on the floor of the capsule sweating bullets. He hadn't begun any of his rigorous training, but had chosen to do basic work and had finished his tenth repetition of ten thousand sit ups at four hundred and ten times gravity. He had been going in between push-ups, sit ups, and pull ups for at least the last ten hours after finding out the information from Bulma, information that was at the very least mildly interesting. He didn't really care about the science behind how Saiyans healed, and he didn't really care about that irritating woman using her findings to create a suitable solution for his medical tank. All he really cared about was her actually getting the task done, and while it irritated him that it would until the end of the month to get it all done, he was at least able to acknowledge how useful the achievement would be for him.

His thoughts wondered in and out around the events of the last few weeks, and as he lay there he experienced for the first time true exhaustion. When was the last time he had slept—not counting the instances of the last few days where he managed to knock himself out?

A week?

Two weeks?

More?

There had been no room or any kind of bed installed in his capsule, and though he had been accustomed to sleeping in uncomfortable areas his entire life, he hadn't thought to take a break and just sleep since he had arrived back on Earth. Much like eating and bathing, the basics of living had been entirely neglected in favor of training, and as Vegeta lay on the cool surface of his training capsule, he was beginning to regret the lack of attention he had been paying to his body lately.

Vegeta groaned, annoyed at the limits of even a Saiyan body. He stilled needed to eat, drink, sleep… all silly things that prevented him from doing what he wanted to do if attention wasn't paid to them.

He sat up, and after a few moments, pushed himself up onto his feet. He recalled weeks earlier when he had first come back to the planet after searching for Kakarrot, that the Bulma Woman had told him there was a room in the guest wing he was allowed to have when he needed to sleep and get away from the capsule. He had scoffed at the idea of actually living in and using the woman's facilities in such a manner, but he had to admit that a real bed was far more welcoming than the hard surface of the floor.

Scowling slightly, he decided that since he was here already, he might as well take the annoying woman up on her offer. After all, she was willing enough to continue to cater to his demands—even if it came with her whining and screeching about it—so it was only logical that he continue to profit off of her strange displays of hospitality.

Vegeta strutted out of the capsule, resigning to only a few hours of sleep before he got back to work. As he walked into the main living quarters, it struck him that he didn't actually know exactly where the guest wing of the house was. He shrugged, figuring he would take whichever room he managed to find first.

He began wondering aimlessly around the circular complex, realizing for the first time that there were really only three places he had ever been in the house—the medical room he had been in when his capsule had exploded, the kitchen, and Bulma's bedroom. He found it odd that he hadn't taken the time to get a full scope of his surroundings, though, he thought as he walked down the expansive halls, he didn't really have a need to scout the area; it wasn't like these pitiful humans were a threat to him.

Vegeta finally came up on a door that suited him, and he pushed it open. He frowned when he saw that it wasn't a bedroom, but rather a bathroom, and the snapped the door shut before moving on.

It went on that way for a while—Vegeta would open up a door expecting a bedroom, only find something obscure like a bathroom or a room with strange blinking equipment and machines or strange supplies. He was beginning to get irritated when he realized that he was in a familiar hallway.

A wicked grin appeared on his face and he turned and continued down the hall. He wasn't going to find a bedroom on his own, so he might as well use what he knew, right?

It didn't take him long before he found the right door, and he didn't bother knocking before entered. He had sensed that Bulma was not in there; even such a small energy signature like hers would have been felt in such close proximity. He walked over various litter on her floor and over to her bed, which looked like it hadn't been slept in in a while.

Vegeta tossed off his shoes and removed his gloves before peeling off his shirt. He didn't give himself much time before he plopped onto Bulma's bed, and he welcomed the plush feel of a well-made mattress. When was the last time he had slept in bed? Hell, when was the last time he pillows, for that matter?

Vegeta didn't bother pulling a blanket over his body before he shut his eyes and drifted off into a well-deserved slumber.


End file.
